"First appearing in St. Nicholas Magazine (1882), The Brownies were drawn from small, gremlin-like figures that Cox's Scottish relatives told him about when he was a child..." Cox went on th create a "franchise" of sorts, as "each successive [Brownie] story introduced a new character, such as the Scotsman, or Dude. The only female figure was a nurse..." Cox published his first book (entitled: "The Brownies: Their Book" in 1887, and followed it with a dozen or more additional books in the series. (McCulloch's "Children's Books of the 19th Century").